Seawater desalination is a process that extracts fresh water from salt water. The fresh water is used for human consumption, irrigation, and other uses. Conventional desalination methods include multi-stage flash distillation and membrane distillation. Membrane distillation systems are becoming increasingly popular due to their relatively low energy consumption. For example, a membrane distillation device may be operated at atmospheric pressure and relatively low temperature.
There are numerous large desalination facilities throughout the world. Fresh water is often transported long distances from these facilities to the eventual end users. The modest efficiencies of current desalination systems drive desalination efforts toward the use of such large-scale facilities. It would be beneficial, however, to provide the opportunity to develop independent water resources to small cities and remote areas in order to achieve improvements in their well being.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.